French site Mac4Ever says that a hands-on look at the machine suggests that it may in future be possible to upgrade the graphic card in the new Mac Pro. We’ve also heard a whisper of unofficial confirmation from an Apple source.

According to our information, it is possible to change the graphics card in this machine. In fact, the GPU is placed on a daughter card, it is possible to remove and thus replace. As you might expect, Apple uses a proprietary connector (as is the case for SSD array present on the rest of the range). But there’s nothing to prevent, on paper, a manufacturer deciding to offer compatible cards. It’s even possible that Apple would offer upgrades. The other good news is NVidia is no longer (at least on paper) completely eliminated as a future possibility for the Mac Pro.

I’m not sure I buy the official Apple upgrade idea: if Apple intended the machine to be that upgradeable, it would likely have made the CPU upgradeable too. But it certainly seems possible that the construction would make it at least technically possible for third-party graphics card upgrades to be made available at a later date.

Graphics work is a key application for the machine. Apple recently noted that a number of professionals had been testing the machine, among them award-winning extreme sports photographer Lucas Gilman.

Apple has opened up one of its rare replacement programs for the graphics card in some mid-2011 iMac configurations, according to a notice issued to Apple Support employees. The iMac in question is the model released in May 2011 with Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt ports. This iMac was sold between that month and October 2012 when Apple launched thinner models with new internals. Apple says that AMD Radeon HD 6970M cards (both 1GB and 2GB configurations) in select versions of these 2011 iMacs could fail: